Mocking Mona.

Above: Banksy Left: Self-Portrait by Salvador Dali

I wrote an article about how the most famous painting of all time 'The Mona Lisa' has been altered by modern art.

ART is considered archaic. ART is no longer the influence of culture. ART is not technology. If Leonardo Da Vinci was asked his views on ‘The Mona Lisa’ would he say it was a religious statement against the Catholic Church or would he laugh at our pretentious views on art and say it was a painting of a pretty girl?

THE MUSÉE DU LOUVRE in Paris guards possibly the most famous painting in the history of art, Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Mona Lisa. Each day thousands of enthusiastic tourists flock to Paris and tick off what they will later boast to have:
 Visited the Eiffel Tower
 Eaten Snails
 And stopped off at the crowded tourist attraction of the world, Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is to Paris what Big Ben is to London. It’s iconic and everyone knows her.
But what makes her so famous and heavily criticised? And why is she now the ridicule of so many 21st century artists?

Over the last few centuries The Mona Lisa has been subject to many controversial changes. The avant-garde art world is routinely modifying and caricaturing her. She is mocked by some of the most celebrated artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali, as well as being utilised as a political argument by graffiti artists as renowned as Banksy. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, a notable Dadaist painter, bought a cheap imitation of the famous painting and produced a readymade piece of art by adorning it with a moustache. He named this piece, L.H.O.O.O, which, pronounced in French, forms ‘Elle a chaud au cul’, directly translating as ‘she is hot in the ass’. Leaving The Mona Lisa’s gender as androgynous, Duchamp could be relating his work to the sexuality of Leonardo Da Vinci or he could be relating it to the idea that The Mona Lisa is in fact a representation of Da Vinci as a woman, with similar characteristics to the artist’s own facial structure. Similarly to Duchamp, in 1954, Salvador Dali produced his own version, ‘Self Portrait as Mona Lisa’. Dali’s piece played with the pretentious views of The Mona Lisa to create a comical, and not so heavily publicised, version of her. He fashioned his own facial features upon Da Vinci’s masterpiece creating an iconoclastic piece of art maintaining the quintessential components of The Mona Lisa.

Many influential artists have replicated The Mona Lisa and, more recently, in 1963, the work of Andy Warhol, ‘thirty are better than one’ illustrated the vast importance and popularity of the painting. The main aim of his silk screened repetition was to re-iterate the painting’s importance by numerously repeating the image.

Possibly one of the most controversial of all of The Mona Lisa reproductions is the political graffiti representations produced by the contentious unidentified artist Banksy. Banksy is recognisable for lighting the flame of the graffiti street art movement yet ironically nobody knows his face. More recently he has been imitating his own versions of The Mona Lisa in context to more political and topical modern day themes and issues. In 2001, Banksy spray painted his version of The Mona Lisa holding a rocket launcher on a wall in Soho. After only 15 minutes of being masterly painted onto a wall it had been converted into a picture of Osama Bin Laden and two days later had been entirely removed this linked very closely with the new idea of associating the cultural backdrop of The Mona Lisa with an anti-war and pacifism message. More recently, Banksy has been producing a similar image of The Mona Lisa and it has been circumnavigating the world. The iconic image of a prestigious piece of art ‘mooning’ the public is an image that The Mona Lisa herself would smirk at. Banksy himself has also had his own version of Da Vinci’s greatest creation hung in the Louvre. In 2004, Banksy walked into the gallery disguised and hung up a piece of work resembling The Mona Lisa but with a bright yellow smiley face. This work was left hanging for in such a prestigious gallery for an unknown duration. His artwork is often satirical and his use of The Mona Lisa, as a main topic of interest, links to the idea of street art vs. high culture and the idea that Da Vinci’s art work has been given a modern day revamp. Although the original The Mona Lisa is said to be priceless, Banksy’s own unique take on the Leonardo Da Vinci classic recently sold in auction for over £57,000 to a British collector.

So, why does The Mona Lisa seem to be smirking?
This is a question that has dumfounded many lovers of Da Vinci’s work for hundreds of years and is the main reason why numerous artists have depicted their own emotional ideas behind the painting and recreated a personal version. There is an abundance of explanations behind her smile ranging from some of the most absurd ideas published by renowned art historians such as the idea that ‘she has just given birth’ and some more sensible and realistic ideas published by great authors and novices. Dan Brown, author of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ writes how he disagrees that The Mona Lisa is famous due to her enigmatic smile. He merely claims that she is so famous because she is considered to be Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘finest accomplishment’. Dan Brown argues that ‘The Mona Lisa’ is a sign of the ‘balance between male and female’ and that, in fact, many of her characteristics, including her smile, are loosely based around Da Vinci’s own personal appearance. The Mona Lisa smile is supposedly a reflection of Da Vinci’s own personal joke and the painting itself reflects the mysteriousness of the subject.
The Mona Lisa’s smile has forever been the subject of controversy. In 1852, a French artist named Luc Maspero jumped four floors to his death in Paris and wrote in his suicide note ‘he preferred death after years of struggling to understand the mystery behind The Mona Lisa’s smile’.

Other views are that The Mona Lisa has actually been painted using an Italian technique called ‘Sfumato’ meaning ‘blurry’. This technique is one of the four canonical painting modes of the renaissance. The finished product aim is to create a mystical ‘veil of smoke’ across the painting. This refers back to the idea that the painting is ambiguous and leaves the idea behind her smile up to the viewer’s imagination.

The Mona Lisa will always be the subject of great ridicule and controversy but it will never take away the fact that it is one of the most iconic pieces of art in the world and art historians will forever try and discover the meaning behind her smile. The paramount secret behind The Mona Lisa is that she is a painting with a secret that only the great Leonardo Da Vinci himself knows. She hides a secret that many people will dedicate their lives to frustratingly try to discover and understand.

ART is archaic. ART isn’t the influence of culture. ART is not technology. But as long as great art still survives there are many people willing to study it and be influenced by great artistic geniuses such as Leonardo Da Vinci. The Mona Lisa will survive through its upheaval and ridicule 

By Rose Thompson